I'm not sure about the ponds, but I do know that at Bishan Park, PUB actually actively encourages people to get close to the water's edge along the Kallang River. That's the stretch that used to be a concrete canal but has since been restored into a natural-looking river, completely with lush growth of aquatic vegetation.

See the following news articles:

Bishan Park canal reshaped into river
A natural river in Bishan Park
From canal to lush waterway

I couldn't find any info about people being explicitly allowed to catch aquatic life in the river, although friends have said they saw children trying to catch fish in there.

Going back on topic, the following scientific publications are good at providing a list of the dragonfly and damselfly species that can be found in some of our urban parks. If any of us choose to rear dragonfly nymphs out of curiosity, these might come in useful to ID the adults.

(Links to PDFs; some of these files can be quite large)


There are also books for people interested in identifying dragonflies and damselflies of Singapore:



Tang Hung Bun's Singapore Odonata website is another excellent resource for identifying various species of dragonflies and damselflies, with lists of species and a photo index.